Just Impact: 2022 trends to watch
Before we get too far into the year, below are some reflections on what I see as some important trends and ideas to watch in 2022:
Healing: When we think about “what replaces prison?”, we often talk about health, housing, access to jobs, and trauma recovery. These are all extremely important. A deeper value underlying these, which strikes me as powerful enough to embody the full scope of transformations we need to see, is Healing. Whether we’re talking about interrupting cycles of harm, addressing trauma in communities, addressing the deep legacies of pain that drive support for punishment, or shifting to a ‘care first’ model, healing shows up everywhere as the north star that can guide us out of mass incarceration.
Accordingly, I’m encouraged to hear a lot more funders and organizations talking about healing lately. Topics that I’ve seen being active in this space include: healing for movement leaders, including psychedelic therapies, mindfulness work funded by folks like the Kataly foundation under its Healing Justice rubric, and personal transformation work such as that led by Success Stories; restorative, transformative, and indigenous peacemaking justice and land programs like the ones funded by Life Comes From It; truth and reconciliation projects like this one; mental health resources for formerly incarcerated people like the ReBuild program here (scroll down a bit), and other collective healing practices; and the longstanding wellness framework championed by groups like Dignity and Power Now (whose new ED, Anthony Clayton-Johnson, founded the Frontline Wellness network that did such important work organizing medical professionals against the jail in Los Angeles). I’m interested in gaining a better grip on the topic, as I think some of the most important and fruitful work over the next few years will happen there.
Leadership development and training: directly impacted leaders are increasingly running strong organizations at the forefront of the field. In order to take advantage of opportunities and meet threats to the work, the field needs a lot more of them, while ensuring that existing leaders are properly supported. In the coming year, I think we will see the emergence of more national training infrastructure for formerly incarcerated leaders. In the meantime, a good place to look for emerging organizations and leaders is the portfolio of Quest for Democracy, a fund run by formerly incarcerated leaders.
Guaranteed income: Formerly incarcerated leaders are building cutting edge guaranteed income projects around the country, such as this one by the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls and this one by Equity and Transformation. The Fund for Guaranteed Income is working in partnership with these and other impacted leaders around the country to build platforms in multiple jurisdictions. This innovation contributes a much-needed economic component to the field, led by formerly incarcerated people and their families. See also this article on how guaranteed income can directly contribute to violence prevention.
Reentry: Millions of people return home from prison and jail every year and try to pick up the pieces of their lives, made difficult by systematic bias and legal restrictions. It’s clear that support is needed, but the problem is so large that it’s hard to know where to start. I’m beginning to hear about efforts to get more systematic about it, with groups thinking now about articulating non-predatory reentry housing and job assistance projects. A few groups to watch: Free World, Weld, CROP, Ahimsa, A New Way of Life, and the SAFE national network.
Youth organizing: one of the most energizing and hopeful moments of 2021 for me was when high school students in Oklahoma walked out of classes en masse to protest the death warrant against likely-innocent Julius Jones. Later that day, the governor commuted Jones’s sentence. A rising tide of young people demonstrating against prisons, led by children of incarcerated parents, would be an incredible breakthrough.
Sensationalist media: if you follow Alec Karakatsanis, you know how frequently the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and other outlets are publishing sensationalized and factually incorrect articles about crime trends, reform prosecutors, and the criminal legal system, most of the time with no quotes from people who actually live in affected communities, and often contradicting official data and statistics. This isn’t a new phenomenon; check out this piece on Victorian sensationalist crime reporting, reviving the public demand for corporal punishment and the death penalty. One of several efforts to address this challenge is Justice Not Fear.
Electoral politics: there are several high-stakes elections this year at the local level, including DA races in Memphis, St. Louis, San Antonio, Dallas, Orange County (CA), Oakland, Seattle, and Boston - in addition to the recall in San Francisco. Moreover, these issues will likely play some significant role in other local and federal races around the country. There’s a lot of noise and concern around these elections and what they will portend for policy work. Something I’m watching closely is how people who have been leaders in speaking out against criminalization are faring in their elections, and there are some promising signs. For example, this week Greg Casar won a resounding victory in his race for Congress in Austin, after strongly rejecting fear based messaging around homelessness that advocated more criminalization.
Absorbing mass interest: Long-term trends of public support are in favor of less punitive and harsh responses to crime and more investment in addressing the root causes, but it’s not going to translate into political power without converting passive support into active support (people voting or withholding votes based on the issue, demonstrations, vocal engagement in one’s community, etc). [I’m using the framework here developed by the Ayni Institute]. To do that, the movement needs to absorb people who want to help, yet right now most people wanting to get into this issue have no idea how to do it. This looks like building more ways for people to get proximate, learn, and build relationships and take action with like-minded people.